Read The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"by William Hope Hodgson Lin Carter Online

BEYOND THE UNKNOWN SEASTHE BOATS OF THE GLEN CARRIG is an Edwardian voyage of mystery and imagination as bizarre as Conan Doyle’s Lost World, as sinister and darkly shadowed as the most fevered and haunting creations of Edgar Allan Poe.Few can equal Hodgson... in 'GLEN CARRIG' there is vast power in the suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface ofBEYOND THE UNKNOWN SEASTHE BOATS OF THE GLEN CARRIG is an Edwardian voyage of mystery and imagination as bizarre as Conan Doyle’s Lost World, as sinister and darkly shadowed as the most fevered and haunting creations of Edgar Allan Poe.Few can equal Hodgson... in 'GLEN CARRIG' there is vast power in the suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life. - H.P. Lovecraft...

Title

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The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"

Author

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William Hope Hodgson Lin Carter

Rating

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ISBN

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9780722147948

Format Type

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Other Book

Number of Pages

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176 Pages

Status

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Available For Download

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21 Minutes ago!

The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" Reviews

Henry Avila2018-12-16 00:12

The Glen Carrig, a sailing ship hits an unseen, large, sharp rock just under the surface of this uncharted ocean in 1757, the survivors of the disastrous sinking float for five days, their precious food supply diminishing, (and hope fades) in two lifeboats, on the sixth a tremendous storm strikes the unfortunates, the furious seas lift their vessels high above and then sends them crashing below, into a valley of watery walls spraying them with icy liquid, the surrounded soaked sailors are threatens by its collapse, and the men forced down to the bottom never to return...Somehow they live and soon see a strange looking low lying island, ( but one of the boats though, vanishes) the only way in is through a large creek, the sailors row up slowly, the trees there are more like bushes, that's it on this weird isle for vegetation . Until night no sounds or animals are seen or heard not even a bird, then a wailing, eerie, forlorn hubbub permeates the land, the strange noises breaks the great silence making the sailors uneasy, unknown things are felt though, evil is near, going down the stream they view a derelict hulk a Brig, board this ship and stay on board, finding and reading letters that ominously warn, of creatures that walk at night. John Winterstraw, a wealthy young gentleman, becomes just another hand, under the command of the wise, tough, but fair boatswain, (no name is given) the only officer left. The sailors lock themselves in a big cabin, listening to sounds of things crawling around trying to get inside, they hope the doors keep standing. Leaving this strange, lonely island in the bright daytime , the men soon see a vast continent of seaweed, (the Sargasso Sea, Portuguese for seaweed ) many a ship captured by the kelp, the crews slowly starve to death, maybe, or something else kills them, finding another bizarre island there, the sailors explore for food and water, again unknown things swim underwater , and crawl in the darkness at night on the land. The men make numerous fires, to keep the creatures away, they have human faces, but are more animal than human, crawl in the dirt and eat the sailors...To the top of a high hill the survivors camp, they view what looks like an abandoned ship, but a fire is seen on board the weed captured vessel, will this be an escape or their doom for the sailors ? When the shadows fall, the abominations crawl....If you enjoy strange, weird, creepy stories this is for you, the connoisseur, it is a voyage into the dark unknown.

mark monday2018-12-20 02:02

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is a creepy travelogue set in 1757, following a diminishing group of men through alien waters after the foundering of the title ship. hey, do you want some giant sea squid, terrifying sounds in the night including some heavy breathing and light shrieking, trees that ooze blood and display tormented human faces, horrible slug-like 'weed men', squirmy flappy tentacled stinging biting things etc? you got it. you want a survival story that has a nuts-n-bolts approach to dealing with clean water, food, repairing a boat, making a fire, all those basic details of an adventure tale? you got that too. hey, do you want a brave & kind & loyal & stronger & smarter than anyone around him type supporting character as your blue collar The Real Hero? with this novella, you get a grade A specimen of the type, free of charge. (oh noble unnamed bo'sun, you rock the house!)William Hope Hodgson is one of the senior members of the classic Weird Fiction crew, and yet he gets less love than melodramatic Lovecraft or the arch & ironic Clark Ashton Smith. unlike Lovecraft, he knows how to restrain himself. his style is wonderfully archaic but he rarely goes over the top and is able to capably conjure up an atmosphere of creeping dread without getting all hysterical about it. he's no Lovecraftian drama queen (don't get me wrong, i love Lovecraft). and unlike CAS, he doesn't seem interested in being witty or using sardonic drollness to create a kind of ironic distance from his horrorscapes (don't get me wrong, i love CAS the most of the Weird writers). Hodgson is rather dry, very sincere, practically humorless, and despite the palpable horrors of Boats, there is a kind of naturalist-slash-spiritual side to him that makes this tale particularly convincing. of all the Weird writers, i would say that his closest brother would be Algernon Blackwood.4 stars for the first two-thirds, which is expertly written and wonderfully dark and atmospheric. unfortunately, 2 stars for the last third, where a very annoying second boat is found, full of annoying people, and worst of all, The Tender & Brave Romantic Interest. that last third brings out the worst in both Hodgson and the narrator. on the one hand, we have endless descriptions of ropes & kites & repairing ships & oh yawn i'm falling asleep again. on the other hand, we have a narrator who suddenly embodies the most cloying aspects of Victorian culture (although, to be precise, the narrative actually takes place in the Georgian era) and who plunges into a particularly labored and trite romantic affair. it's like being forced to sit in Great Aunt Hortensia's stuffy, musty, doily-shrouded parlour and listening to her endless and microscopic descriptions of the Victorian Mating Ritual. especially irritating when i came over to visit Grandfather Jedediah and listen to some of his eerie ghost stories. get away Aunt Hortensia, your stories make me a little nauseous. and your tea is too sickly sweet.this was my first audiobook and i have to say that i didn't enjoy the experience. i have a couple more on my ipod so i will try again; hopefully this will turn out to be an anomaly. the narrator was as monotone as they come and the sinister, atonal sound effects & music - although suitably unnerving at first - eventually became wearying (although they did add a delightfully macabre quality to the saccharine romance). but worst of all was my inability to go back, reread, and so further enjoy all the glorious WORDS ON THE PAGE. it was frustrating and it made the experience so much less immersive.

Jon Recluse2018-11-28 19:25

Though the writing is a bit rusty and crusted with sea salt at times, Hodgson's first novel is a sustained work of unrelenting terror that is a direct ancestor of Tim Curran's DEAD SEA. This is an excursion into the big unknown, filled with unimaginable horrors that the suthor never slows down to explain. He simply relates his tale of lifeboats lost somewhere off the nautical charts, letting the reader become one of the shipwrecked survivors, facing incomprehensible monstrosities borne from the depths of a nightmare sea.Highly recommended!

Bettie☯2018-12-12 00:10

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Steve2018-11-18 22:12

Starts out great (and weird). It's an unusual book that gets you thinking about Dante's Inferno, Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters, Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and Lovecraft (of course). All of that said, I wish Hodgson had cast this as a long short story. About the midway point I lost interest. Hodgson knew what it was to be a seaman, and he piles on the seafaring details in a way that recalls Conrad and Melville. These details add to the authenticity of the story by acting as concrete counterpoints to all the strangeness. This works -- up to a point, but about the time a giant bow is constructed (pages and pages), the recording of minute details really starts to drag the story down, and you start to become aware that this is a comfortable return point for Hodgson, a device, but one that he's relying too much on. Still, I'm glad I read it, and can see how influential this story must have been.

Dfordoom2018-11-23 19:16

One of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. In the mid-18th century a ship, The Glen Carrig has ventured into strange and unknown seas and has been wrecked. Some of the crew survive and take to the lifeboats. They initially reach an island that is nothing but mud, with strange and rather disgusting vegetation. They find the wreck of another ship, and encounter strange noises and are attacked by nameless faceless horrors. The horror is very Lovecraftian. What Hodgson seemed to be aiming for in this novel is what I call A Sense of Wrongness – these are beings that should not be allowed to exist, but they do exist, things that exist in defiance of Nature’s laws. There’s the same sense that you get in much of Lovecraft’s work of unhealthiness and corruption, and physical degeneracy. Hodgson is very effective in conveying a morbid atmosphere, an atmosphere of dread. If you like very off-beat weird fiction then Hodgson may well be just the writer you’ve been looking for.

The conventional words of wisdom for any aspiring new author have long been "write what you know," a bit of advice that English author William Hope Hodgson seemingly took to heart with his first published novel, "The Boats of the Glen Carrig." Before embarking on his writing career, Hodgson had spent eight years at sea, first as an apprentice for four years and then, after a two-year break, as a third mate for another long stretch. And those hard years spent at sea were put to good use not only in "Boats," but in his third novel, "The Ghost Pirates," and in many of his short stories and poems as well. According to August Derleth, "No other writer--not Conrad nor Melville nor any other--has so consistently dealt with the eternal mystery of the sea," a sentiment very closely echoed by Lin Carter in his excellent introduction to "Boats" in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition pictured above."Boats" is in many ways a remarkable book. It takes the form of a saga of survival narrated by John Winterstraw to his son in the year 1757, and tells of what happened to the two remaining lifeboats after the sudden sinking of the Glen Carrig. The survivors had drifted for many days before coming upon a desolate swampland (referred to by Winterstraw as the Land of Lonesomeness), replete with strange wailing noises and some decidedly nasty arboreal life. After fleeing this inhospitable land and surviving a horrible storm, one of the boats had fetched upon a small island in the middle of a gigantic area of entangling seaweed. Their adventures on this unusual island make up the bulk of Winterstraw's narration, and what a strange tale it is! Indeed, this island almost makes the one featured on the hit TV series "Lost" seem normal, surrounded and infested as it is with giant crab monsters (could Roger Corman be a fan of this book?), humongous octopi (think 1955's "It Came From Beneath the Sea") and, most memorably (WARNING: possible spoiler ahead), the weed men: pale, slimy, vampiric, bipedal slug creatures that swarm in the hundreds and attack both on land and at sea. Between fending off attacks from the nasty animal life on the island, seeking food and water, and attempting the rescue of an old, manned sailing vessel that had been trapped for years in the seaweed morass, the Glen Carrig survivors surely do have their hands full.But a capsule description of this novel cannot possibly succeed in conveying the eeriness of the book, or its outre sense of mood and otherworldliness. Hodgson has his Winterstraw narrator speak in a seemingly pseudo-archaic language that may intially put some readers off, but that (for me, anyhow) lends to an unusual veracity nevertheless, as well as strangeness. A single sentence can easily run on for 2/3 of a page in this novel, with six or seven semicoloned sections. The grammar and syntax used are quite bizarro, an expedient that Hodgson also used in his 1912 epic novel "The Night Land." In that later novel, this invented form of English was meant to convey the language of some billions of years hence; here, it stands in for an 18th century English that probably never was. Hodgson also uses many nautical terms that may send modern-day readers scurrying for their dictionaries, but most of those readers will not mind, being more than content with this short novel's rapid pacing, creepy atmosphere and, above all, truly frightening monsters. Not for nothing was this book chosen for inclusion in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume "Horror: Another 100 Best Books." Though the only characters we really get to know with any degree of depth are our narrator and the remarkably intrepid bo'sun leader of the men, the book is as memorable as can be, and concludes most satisfactorily.(On a side note, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that in my first sentence above, I refer to "Boats" as Hodgson's "first published novel" rather than his "first novel," and that is because there seems to be some confusion on this point. In his scholarly Internet essay "Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson," Sam Gafford makes a convincing case for "Boats" being Hodgson's LAST novel, and "The Night Land" his first...in direct opposition to the order long believed to have been the case! Using internal evidence from a batch of recently unearthed Hodgson letters, Gafford really does press his point home....)

Maggie K2018-12-18 19:24

I really liked this book, and felt that it kept up a good amount of tension. I think I only rated it a 3 because there is something about a story in first person chronological narrative that just always adds a little monotony.It's also a little frustrating that there was never anything else learned about wth these 'monsters' were...but the escape from them was enough to make the read enjoyable.

Shawn2018-12-15 21:06

First of all, I didn't *read* this so much as listen to it in a wonderful podcast reading complete with dark ambient music and atmospheric sound effects, by Paul R. Potts. Mr. Potts has read a few short Hodgson pieces, downloadable at his blog TALES FROM THE POTTS HOUSE, but this is the first novel he tackled (I believe The House on the Borderland is on its way). The production and ambient music choices are very well done and Mr. Potts, while the slightest bit stiff at times, is actually the perfect reader for the rather dry, stiff, deliberately dated style Hodgson chose to write this book in. The podcast runs 17 chapters, the first of which is downloadable here.The book itself is written as an account/record by one of the survivors of the accidental sinking of the Glen Carrig, those lucky few who fled to two large lifeboats when the ship hit a rock, and the adventures they experience. Those of modern sensibilities, unable to place writings into their historical stylistic contexts, need not apply. There are no "characters", per se, just a recitation of the vicissitudes the survivors must undergo as, adrift at sea, they encounter a flat island of mud and evil vegetation (trees that bleed, complete with wailing human faces, and nightly assaults by monstrous plants), escape into a storm at sea and then find themselves stranded on a larger, higher island smack dab in the middle of a "weed continent" in the Sargasso sea. Survival is the key, as our plucky narrator and the crew/passengers fight off giant crabs (brought to mind the Harryhausen MYSTERIOUS ISLAND film adaptation of Verne), "Devil Fish" (essentially, giant squids), and the hideous "Weed Devils", pale white squid-men with tentacled arms and snapping beaks who live in the sargassum and come ashore for nightly attacks. And all this must be done while engineering a way of making contact with a huge old ship, stranded just off-shore in a tangle of weed, whose survivors have been in this hellish place for seven years!It's quite a lot of fun, although Hodgson's choice to tell the story in deliberately archaic language may turn off quite a few - the writing is dry and flat, although not without exciting incident. Some details that seem like wastes of time (the construction of a giant bow, the manufacturing of which is described in full detail, that later proves incapable of fulfilling its purpose) do end up having a point, while it also may be said that you might hear more in-depth nautical details and lists of equipment than you would care for. The scenes in the initial mud-island and the first wrecked ship that the survivors retreat to at night are very effective - suffused with a feeling of both sterility and corruption (nothing will grow there but fecund yet degenerate vegetation) and a later attack by a devil-fish on the beach of the higher island, again, reads as something out of a Sinbad movie. Parts of this book must have been lifted for the obscure Hammer film THE LOST CONTINENT, I think.Anyway, lots of fun.

Graham2018-12-15 03:06

Hodgson is one of my favourite British horror authors, his efforts coming in that golden period of fantastic fiction written at the turn of the 20th century. The Boats of the Glen Carrig is as creepy an effort as you could wish for, an outstanding cross between the kind of creepy sea chills that Hodgson based on personal experience of being a seaman (he also wrote many similarly-themed short stories) and the kind of thrilling, giant monster adventure that reminded me of Jules Verne. All right, The Boats of the Glen Carrig may not be particularly original or unique – Hodgson saved that for The House on the Borderland and The Night Pirates – but it’s nonetheless a riveting story of adventures in the Sargasso sea, as our shipful of heroes (no mutineers here) find themselves facing creatures as diverse as giant crabs, huge devil-fish (or octopi) and, most memorable, a range of ‘weed men’, strange amphibian humanoids with a penchant for human flesh. I don’t know if Lovecraft read this before he sat down to write his Cthulhu stories but I’d guess he must have, as this reminded me a lot of sleeping Cthulhu and the sea-dwelling inhabitants of The Shadow over Innsmouth.Hodgson’s anecdotal style is one I could immediately settle into and the resulting story is one which I didn’t want to end. It’s episodic in nature, heavily reliant on atmosphere (very effective) with bursts of action punctuating the narrative. The story always kept me guessing as to what was going to happen next and, while there’s no supernatural stuff going down here, it’s frequently eerie if not in-your-face frightening. I loved this, my first exposure to the author at novel-length, and I can’t wait to try the rest of his oeuvre.

José Nebreda2018-11-23 21:04

Qué placer releer a mi adorado Hodgson.

Michael2018-12-03 23:04

As with much of Hodgson's writing, there is no dialogue in The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', the story being presented as a witness account from one person's viewpoint, with few of the characters, including the narrator, being named. I've read some reviews which criticise him for this form, it being, undeniably, monotone in effect and, for some, it may come off as rather flat, if not to say boring. In the present case, throw in the reserved language of an earlier era and a surfeit of nautical jargon and the result might be of remoteness and impenetrability. However, that's a view for others, as I love Hodgson's work and find in the faults ascribed by others a well-crafted style, well-suited to the atmosphere he seeks to create.The story begins without preamble with the narrator and his companions already adrift in their lifeboats. It's never explained how the 'Glen Carrig' came to founder, nor exactly where nor when. It is to be assumed that the narrator's fictional audience know these details, the loss of a vessel and the unexpected return of the survivors having undoubtedly been a widely-reported sensation. Depending upon your temperament, this, and other, unexplained incidents may be frustrating or evocative. I'll pass on from narrative style, though, by restating that it suits my own taste. I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the 'horror' in the story is not of the supernatural variety, such as in Hodgson's The Ghost Pirates, but is rather in the macabre/weird vein, with the 'Glen Carrig' survivors contending with mundane, if strange, eerie and malevolent, forces. That said, it's little surprise that H.P. Lovecraft admired Hodgson's writing, and the dangers faced by the survivors could easily have crawled out of the Cthulhu bestiary (though Hodgson wrote during the generation before Lovecraft).The ingenuity and occasional foolishness of the survivors is appealing and, despite knowing the characters mainly as sketches rather than fully-formed persons, I nonetheless found myself engaged with and drawn into their struggle for survival.Hodgson having been a sailor for many years, he writes what he knows, which includes a lot of nautical jargon. I think it's rarely necessary to know the specifics of the terms, as they're generally adding flavour, though there are those times when it seemed to me he could have explained himself in more lubberly terms for the sake of his non-fictional audience (really, my only small criticism). The upshot (if you've not served time on a square-rigged sailing so) is that you either blithely pass over the nautical terms or have a good dictionary to hand, speaking of which...Some nautical nomenclature that I've had to look up to be sure of what I'm reading (gleaned from The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Volume I and The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Volume II):Thwart: [page 2] A seat across a boat, on which the rower sits; a rower's bench (ok, I knew this one, but then doubted myself).Bo'sun [page 3] (Well, yes, it's short for 'boatswain', one of a ship's officers, but what are their duties?) An officer in a ship who has charge of the sails, rigging, etc., and whose duty it is to summon the men to their duties with a whistle.Scuttle: [page 9] A square or rectangular hole or opening in a ship's deck, smaller than a hatchway, furnished with a movable cover or lid, used as a means of communication between deck and deck. (From which is derived the act of sinking a vessel by cutting a hole, or 'scuttle', into the bottom of the hull).Lazarette: [page 10] A space between decks, in some merchant vessels, used as a storeroom. Breaker: [page 11] A small keg.Caboose: [page 16] The cook-room of merchantmen on deck.Brig: [page 25] A vessel with two masts square-rigged like a ship's fore and main masts, but carrying also on her main-mast a lower fore-and-aft sail with a gaff and boom. (I'm not sure I'll remember this technical description of what makes vessel a brig.)Whaleback: [page 32] Interestingly, there is no definition for this particular usage of the word in my dictionaries, nor on the internet. From what Hodgson describes, it appears to be a large piece of curved timber which can be stowed on a boat, which he says is erected using supports and stay ropes to act as a framework for sailcloth, the sailcloth being nailed to the gunnels and the whole acting as a roof to the boat to prevent water washing into the vessel during a storm.Bends: [page 47] The wales of a boat. With 'wales', in turn, meaning either the gunwales (the topmost planking of the vessel's sides) or, most likely in this case, the horizontal planks or timbers, broader and thicker than the rest, which extend along a ship's sides at different heights, from stem to stern.Shroud: A set of ropes, usually in pairs, leading from the head of a mast and serving to relieve the latter of lateral strain.Futtock-shroud: [page 106] One of the small shrouds which secure the lower dead-eyes and futtock-plates of topmast rigging to a band around the lower mast. Futtock-plate: One of the iron plates crossing the sides of the top-rim perpendicularly, to which the futtock-shrouds are secured. Dead-eye: A round, laterally flattened wooden block, pierced with three holes through which a lanyard is reeved,used for extending the shrouds.Sennit: [page 106] Plaited grass used to make hats, though in Hodgson's usage, also twine.Frap: [page 109] To bind tightly.Flake down: [page 110] to lay out rope in long flat flakes, or fakes, each one overlapping the previous one, so that it is ready for running. A Flake is a coil of rope ready to be run out.Kedge: [page 166] A small anchor which, being attached to a hawser and cast out, is hauled upon to move a boat in lieu of sail or oar. To kedge is to propel a boat in this fashion.

Feli2018-12-14 00:12

Hodgson's 'Glen Carrig' started really well. I was intrigued, it was weird, Lovecraftian, creepy.But then, in the middle, it really got stuck. It just went on too long. Hodgson became very repetitive both in language (with every 'presently' I wanted to throw my kindle out of the window, honestly) and in 'story'. It was just every day the same: waking up, working on a device for the rescue, explaining how to build this device for about 3-5 pages, eating, watch out, fear of the dark, sleeping. On the next day then, of course, they forgot that a kite needs a rope, and everything starts again, this time with a precise instruction on how to make a rope (again!).All in all, I liked the story, the ending became a bit better again, but it was just a little bit too much of all!

Wes K.2018-12-11 21:17

Loved the matter-of-fact manner of telling combined with gripping surrealism.

Scott2018-11-22 00:23

When the great escape artist Houdini called for a volunteer to tie him up, William Hope Hodgson stepped forward and applied his fertile imagination to the task. It took Houdini two hours to pry himself from the bizarre knots. Hodgson’s stories can be just as tangled. He knows how to hold his audience. The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907) kept my attention for four nights of softhearted seafaring horror.In the middle of the eighteenth century, a ship goes down somewhere in the southern seas. The survivors take to the ship’s boats. At first they are carried to an island infested with carnivorous trees. They escape, only to be buffeted by a tremendous storm. One of the boats disappears. The other lands on a seemingly benign spot of rock where the crew hopes to make repairs. Will they escape before they discover the source of the long, lonesome sobbing that’s carried on the midnight wind? There’s enough nautical jargon in this tale to satisfy any Patrick O’Brian junkie. And there’s enough slime and tentacles and stench to slake any appetite for Lovecraftian gore. If you cringed before the ‘pig-men’ of Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland, wait until you meet this story’s ‘weed-men’. There’s even a genuine love story tucked in here, and that was the greatest surprise of all.The story is told in first person by a survivor. His voice is not always convincing, but he speaks clearly, and he knows how to interlard his tale with with talk about splines and capstans and jury masts and one thing coming athwart another. He’s not nearly as interesting as the narrator of The House on the Borderland, but then we never have reason to question his sanity. Sea monsters, man-eating trees, gigantic crabs, towering mushrooms ... it’s all just a matter of plain fact with him.So, if you are in the mood for a ‘Swiss Family Robinson vs the Slime Men’ sort of a tale, you’ve found your pot of gold. But if you are looking for a hair-raising, or just a disquieting, piece of horror, you may want to pass this by.

Daniel Gonçalves2018-11-24 02:12

My arousing interest in a Heavy Metal band called AHAB - its name an homage to a “Moby Dick” character - lured me into reading “The Boats of the Glen Carrig”. AHAB are a group of talented german musicians. They released an album last year, where all of the song lyrics where based on William Hope Hodgson’s 1907 narrative about a boat crew who got stuck on an island. I was so in love with the music that I had to read the book. I was immensely satisfied.Classifying the story’s genre is an ungrateful task. But I believe the book tells a nautical tale. At the same time, the author incorporates elements of horror and fantasy into the events depicted. This might be what turns the narrative into a unique experience. Here, Hodgson delivers an assemblage of genres, styles, and ideas to immerse the reader into an eerie and dangerous universe.But the writing is even more curious. It is a first-person account of a passenger of the boat. Therefore, the prose can be considered rough and blunt. It may take a couple of pages for the reader to get into its rythms and tropes. Once he is accustomed to it, the access to the writer’s pictorial representations become more defined, and the narrative more enjoyable.“The Boats of the Glen Carrig” brings the best out of the drama, mystery and horor in a story. The characters are well-defined and believable. The plot is inventive and seducting. It might be one of the best nautical adventures ever written.

Leonie2018-11-28 20:14

Somewhat akin to the work of Lovecraft, with weird sea creatures and monstrous fungi, yet in a more affable style of writing. I'm really pleased to have found this book and author and can't wait to read more of his work. From start to finish I was completely engrossed in the atmospheric tale.Thoroughly entertaining!

AcantheaGrimscythe | The Ghastly Grimoire2018-11-27 23:03

Prior to selecting The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ as my next read on Serial Reader, I was unaware that William Hope Hodgson was a source of inspiration for Lovecraft. In fact, as I devoured the novel, I remember remarking to myself how much it felt like something Lovecraft would write – and no wonder!The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ is written in first-person point of view and feels largely epistolary in form (though it is actually a travelogue). There is no dialogue and readers only know what Winterstraw writes. The story follows a marooned ship and its crew first as they encounter an odd island and then as they end up stranded in what appears as a Hell on Earth – or in this case, the sea. There, they discover another ship entangled in seaweed for seven years (yeah, I don’t get that either, but hey who’s judging?).Oddly enough, despite the myriad oddities that those aboard the Glen Carrig encounter, it is the second ship they find that truly bewilders me and crosses me as unbelievable. I’m all for the time of creatures this group encounters, but I cannot fathom how it is possible that so many individuals survived on ship that was, for the most part, dead in the water. I kept waiting and waiting for something to go wrong, for something truly disturbing to happen in regards to the other boat and well… there was nothing.Even though I feel disappointed by the outcome of things with the other ship, overall I found The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ a fun read. For fans of H. P. Lovecraft, it is a must-read. The Wildside Press publication of this book, as well as several other public domain publications, are available on Amazon, free of charge. An audio version can be found on Librivox, an organization comprised of volunteers that come together to record audiobooks of titles that are in the Public Domain.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden2018-12-04 23:06

Bit of a weird beast, this. There's almost nothing in the way of characterisation, and the reviews that cite it as a 'travelogue' feel like they're hitting the nail between the eyes. It's essentially the tale of a shipwrecked crew coming ashore on an island full of Things That Should Not Be. But that's what's weird about it. The lack of characterisation somehow served to hammer home the sense of it just being a group of normal, everyday men and women in bizarre and supernatural Circumstances. I found myself not reading it to see what would happen to the characters (most of whom aren't even named or described in any detail), but to find out just what insane horrors they'd come across next.The prose is very dry (see: the travelogue comments) but again, that's almost a virtue in this - it adds to the '19th Century ship's log' authenticity of the narrator's voice. I think he uses the word "presently" at least once every two pages, but it's clearly a theme to convey the narrator's steady, stoic retelling of events, and once I hooked into that, I got over the way it'd made me grind my teeth for the first few chapters.The descriptions of the supernatural events and the monsters that plague the crew are plainly told, in this blunt, basic descriptive text, which would usually feel clumsy. Except, this time, I ended up loving it... with an asterisk. Some of the descriptions worked beautifully. Some of it had me itching to skip ahead and ignore what vines and wood they used for pulleys and rigging and... whatever else.Some of the descriptions were so flat and basic (like the glimpse of a monster, as something that looked like slabs of uncooked beef sucking against a porthole) that they ended up bypassing my thoughts of it all being written too simply, and ended up feeling grotesquely convincing. The vileness that the crew encounters was all too easy to imagine, in all its unpleasant rankness. And then, right on the other side of it, I found myself infinitely less engaged in several pages of exactly how they were trying to build weapons, or tie ropes here and there, or counterweights and ballast (among other things) using materials X, Y, and Z. I couldn't really recommend it without reservation; in fact, I kinda struggle to think of many among my family and friends that would enjoy it. But if you like Lovecraft, even those stories with his most halting prose, then you'll find a familiar home in "The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" '. I enjoyed it a lot, but it doesn't feel like it'll be getting a Lazy Sunday 'comfort re-read' any time soon.

Rory2018-12-11 19:27

I'd never read anything by this author up until now so I was very curious to see what they had to offer (though if you're one of the writers who inspired H.P Lovecraft then surely it's worth some merit ain't it?) For a first novel (not just for myself but the writer as well) this was quite a satisfactory read. Though the characterization and story is pale what really comes through with this book is the spectacle. There's a lot of really sublime descriptions of weird sea creatures, from fish monsters and giant crabs to seeweed men and the like it's all wrought with wonderfully palpable passages.Pretty much everyone in this book can never catch a break from fighting off these things (and there's a whole ferry load of them), these people must have iron willpower 'cause they re still standing after all that like nothing's happened.Me? I'd have been like: One gripe I had was that it always continued with a heavy prose style, which I sometimes found hard to read (though part of this might be to do with the edition I read from), it got a bit monotonous from time to time, and I know it was written in the style of a old MS, but I think some spoken text would have worked just a bit to break up sections.Overall I somewhat enjoyed this novel and I'll be sure to read more works by the same author, and those who are interested in weird fiction might like to dip into this.

Sean2018-11-27 03:13

"The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" by William Hope Hodgson was truly a completely different story to what I was used too with his other works but was still thoroughly enjoyable !The story opens up with a crew hoping to find land due to dwindling resources and they happen to come upon a, 'muddy' land, which to me totally reminded me of Dagon, where they quickly go in search for replenishing supplies. Quickly, in true Hodgson fashion, starts to turn creepy. The crew come upon an bonded ship full of supplies with clear signs that the ship was left in a hurry. During the night the crew are attacked by a tentacle creature where the crew take refuge in the captains cabin. They come across scraps of notes from a female passenger who has now disappeared, throw in unsettling shrieks during each night from plants which resemble people. The sheer terror of this is actually frightened me honestly. If i was in their shoes I would be terrified !Half the crew end up back on the island in even a worse situation but all is not alas, without the Bo'sun I honestly think no one would make it out alive.I won't spoil the ending but it includes crossbows, a buxom woman and blood drained bodies being grave robbed.Honestly such a gem of a book, I would have loved something like this in High School !7/10

This is a rather gripping survival horror story that follows the crew of a pair of lifeboats, sailors adrift after the sinking of the titular 'Glen Carrig.' Hodgson wastes no time getting into the action; the shipwreck itself is covered in basically a single perfunctory paragraph, and events start getting strange and deadly very quickly."The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" is similar to his other novels, "The House on the Borderland" and "The Night Land," in that they're basically a linear narrative following the protagonist through a number of bizarre episodes. They read more like travelogues than carefully plotted novels, but the events are interesting enough that this isn't much of a complaint.The story is written in an intentionally archaic style, with no quoted dialogue and few named characters, but it's fast-paced and packed with engrossing imagery. Stylistically it's a much more approachable read than "The Night Land," which--while challenging--I also enjoyed considerably.Hodgson delivers a thoroughly entertaining and imaginative story. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him thus far, and it's become clear that he's one of the more underrated figures in early 20th century horror fiction. I recommend "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" wholeheartedly.

Nikki 2018-12-03 02:28

I first saw William Hope Hodgson's work published in the "fantasy masterworks" series, so I was curious to read these forerunners to modern fantasy fiction. It's a bit like fantasy, a bit like speculative fiction, and a bit like horror, all mixed in. Quite interesting to read, and to guess at who it might be an influence for.I couldn't help thinking of Homer's Odyssey as I was reading this, although the men and women of this story don't have to go quite so far as Odysseus -- except perhaps the ones in the hulk, who have to endure seven years hanging around in the weed continent, fearing the monsters all the time... In any case, this book isn't really about any of the characters -- there are few named characters, and little dialogue, and not many descriptions of people -- but about the semi-supernatural monsters the luckless ship comes across. The writing is slow to read, and quite dense, but the descriptions and the tension of it are good. There's a touch of romance, too, and although Mary Madison isn't exactly a fully realised character, and the narrator isn't wonderfully sympathetic and human himself, that does add a bit of life and cheer to the end of the story.

Dawie2018-12-14 21:18

Boats of Glen Carrig is a definate recomendation if anyone likes the classics.I must say that I was totaly taken with the story at first, seeing as the first half of the tale was quite intense.What i did not like was some of the sentance structures in the book, I will add that my understanding of English origins aint that great either, so I my be at fualt too. But in the end I did like the story.. One thing that bugs me is that we never know who the narator was( his name is never mentioned, neither that of most of the characters) if it was deliberate, then I guess writer's freedom is at hand, but it does make for difficult reading. Why not call the person who looses his fingers Bob and refer to Bob instead of "that man wich lost his finger". Enter a band called Ahab (yes, like the guy that went of hunting Moby Dick), whom brought out their first album out, inspired by The great Whale hinself, decided to base an album on this book by W.H.H. . Thanks be to Ahab, who have made me read my third maritime novel thanks to their albums. How they do it I wonder every day.

Brucifer2018-11-20 19:10

Though I like Hodgson, this novel is final proof to me that he was at his best writing creepy nautical short stories--like his classic "A Voice in the Night"--rather than novels. As to his novels, while Hodgson was great at building suspense, creating a horrific atmosphere, and providing believability via authentic nautical details, he was not terribly good at plotting or characterization, which makes the novels drag. This novel reads like a series of interconnected incidents rather than a proper novel with some sense of development. At first, that's fine, almost as if Hodgson had strung together several of his better short stories. As the book nears its last 80 pages or so, however, you can see that he really didn't know where to go with it, and the novel goes off the rails. Still, it's entertaining most of the way. The horror sequences are genuinely frightening - I can see why H.P. Lovecraft enjoyed Hodgson's work.

Carl Alves2018-12-05 21:25

The Boats of the Glen Carrig, a tale of a ship that struck rock and was stranded as a result, was written in the early part of the twentieth century but feels like it is written about four centuries earlier. The best way to describe the writing is archaic and dated. The dialogue is poor. The horror isn’t particularly descriptive. There is nothing to really draw the reader into the novel, and I found myself just going through the motions to try to finish it about a quarter of the way through. By the end, I felt obligated to finish the novel and didn’t particularly enjoy any of it. His description of the sea and aspects of sailing were fairly well done but not particularly engrossing. I would advise skipping this novel.Carl Alves – author of Two For Eternity

Christopher Martin2018-12-09 19:06

Surprisingly intriguing. I didn't know what to expect at all when I picked up this novel and, partly due to its impenetrable faux-antiquated writing style and partially because of its unexplained in media res starting point, it took a really long time for me to get my bearings in this novel. Nonetheless, once I got into it, I found it to be quite a satisfying read, in turns gripping and bone-chilling. Until the end at least, which was a little bit dissatisfying.

Acer Pseudoplantatus2018-12-11 23:26

A wondrous tale of terror, told through a memoir/travelogue-type of narration, centred around the narrator and boatswain who are both well written and established characters.The story might have needed more background information and some characters could have been "elevated" into more prominent roles, but it was a truly enjoyable read. Its main appeal for me lies in the atmosphere, prose and the detailed and vivid descriptions of ships and boats, work on them and their repair.

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About the author

William Hope Hodgson Lin Carter - William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. Hodgson served with the British Army durng World War One. He died, at age 40, at Ypres, killed by German artillery fire.

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